Dear Working Parent

Dear Working Parent,

It’s me, your childless coworker. Twenty-three years old, married, with an eight-to-five job. I wake up every morning and my biggest concern is taking my dog outside for a walk and what I will be cooking for dinner that night. I drive to the office, focus on what’s in front of me, and drive home knowing that my night is going to be whatever I want it to be. For some of us at Preiss, it really couldn’t be easier than that.

For others, your day’s ins and outs are a bit more complicated than that. Your first “to do” in the morning is to get your kids out of bed. You walk downstairs, prepare your day for theirs, and make breakfast for more than just yourself. You look at your calendars to review all the doctors appointments, haircuts, soccer games, and dance recitals you have to help your little ones get to that day, even if it means sometimes forgetting about your own schedules. You spend your days at work worrying about grades, if they ate all their food at lunch, and whether or not you will be late picking them up after your job ends. You go to bed exhausted, even though you know it’s worth it for them, not being able to imagine what tomorrow will bring. These are trials the rest of us could never begin to understand.

Being in a pandemic certainly hasn’t made your lives easier. With school online and daycares closing, you’ve had to make countless sacrifices in regards to your time, your job, and even your sanity. But beneath the noise and the chaos, you deserve to hear this.

I have the pleasure of working with two beyond amazing moms to two wonderful kids. Working each day with them, I see the challenges, joys, heartaches, and celebrations they experience being working parents. I am lucky enough to say that my parenting coworkers have taught me more about patience, compassion, and dedication than most people I have come to know in my life. I know I am not the only one who has working parents near and dear to their hearts. I know this even goes beyond our own company, that there are parents who go to their jobs every day in our country. While every working parent faces different challenges and trials during their careers, I discovered that all of you have one thing in common: consistent self-sacrifice.

I can speak on behalf of your childless coworkers at Preiss when I say that the working parents in our company are the strongest ones of us all. You consistently put yourselves behind others to serve not only your children and families, but your teams at Preiss as well. Each day that you come into work and dedicate your time and energy (which we know is more than precious), it makes a difference to us all. We know the time you spend away from your family and kids is invaluable in itself, but knowing you do this to make Preiss a better company and to give other people’s kids a better living experience is beyond selfless. Words cannot begin to express how grateful we are for you and your commitment to the rest of us, because without you we wouldn’t have a backbone of strong, dependable employees. Without you, we wouldn’t have a generation being raised to become strong, dependable individuals, capable of making the same sacrifices you do every day. 

So, working parents, thank you. Thank you more now than ever before. You are seen, heard, and loved by your teams here at Preiss. The sacrifice you make each day is one that only you are able to understand, but through the trials and tribulations, just know your team has you and your family’s back.